Agenda item

At this point in the meeting, any member of the public who has registered to address the Council, or to ask a Member of the Council a question, on a matter directly relevant to the setting of the Council’s budget for the coming financial year may do so.  The deadline for registering is 5:00pm on Wednesday 21 February 2018. To register to speak please contact the Democracy Officers for the meeting, on the details at the foot of the agenda.

WEBCASTING NOTICE

Please note: this meeting may be filmed for live or subsequent broadcast via the internet - at the start of the meeting the Lord Mayor will confirm if all or part of the meeting is being filmed.

You should be aware that the Council is a Data Controller under the Data Protection Act. Data collected during this webcast will be retained in accordance with the Council’s published policy.

Public seating areas will not be filmed by the Council.

The Council’s protocol on Webcasting, Filming & Recording of Meetings ensures that these practices are carried out in a manner both respectful to the conduct of the meeting and all those present.  It can be viewed at http://www.york.gov.uk/download/downloads/id/11406/protocol_for_webcasting_filming_and_recording_of_council_meetings_20160809.pdf

The Lord Mayor advised Members that under Public Participation procedures, at Budget Council each registered speaker had a maximum of 3 minutes to address Council  or ask a question on any matter directly relevant to the setting of the budget, as laid down in Standing Orders governing Council meetings Although there were 4 formally registered speakers tonight, some other residents had expressed an interest in speaking at the meeting on matters which were not related to the setting of the budget. 

Given that one of the interested speakers wished to speak in relation to Minute No 58 below (Appointment of a Council Leader) and by way of further clarity, the Lord Mayor added that at Annual Council, where the Council Leader was traditionally appointed, Council Standing Orders did not specifically provide for public participation on that business  as such appointments were deemed to be essentially internal business.

In light of these procedures and practices, the Lord Mayor asked Council if any Member wished to move suspension of Standing Order 14.4 to allow those members of the public who wished to speak at the meeting tonight on non-budget related issues, to do so.

Councillor Dave Taylor moved, and Councillor Kramm seconded, a motion to suspend Standing Order 14.4 to allow those speakers to participate.

Councillor Williams called for a named vote and this was supported by Councillors Danny Myers and Derbyshire.

In accordance with Standing Order 34.1, a named vote was then taken to suspend Standing Orders, with the following result.

The motion was declared CARRIED.  As a result, the interested speakers were allowed by Council to address the meeting on non-budget related matters (see below)

The Lord Mayor then invited the first speaker to address Council, that being Mr Peter Richardson, who, despite formally registering,   was not in attendance at the meeting.

The following 3 speakers then addressed Council in relation to the setting of the Council’s budget.

Anne Leonard spoke to express her concern in relation to the closure of council owned care homes and asked for assurances that the standard of care for elderly people in York would not suffer as a consequence.

Josephine Smith spoke in relation to budget proposals in relation to community care. She expressed concern that as council run care homes were sold, care for the elderly was left, for the most part in the hands of private companies, and fragmentation of the service risked leaving the elderly vulnerable.

Sheena Foxwell spoke on behalf of ‘Defend Our NHS’, in relation to the budget proposals and asked what the council would be doing to look at the health and wellbeing of residents in relation to the impact of the measures to be taken as part of the budget proposals.

Gwen Swinburn, a local resident, then addressed the council in relation to the appointment of Council Leader and related governance matters. She expressed the view that, in her opinion,  not all councillors had been treated fairly in relation to their positions on the Executive while Standards Board complaints were being dealt with.

Wendy Loveday spoke as Chair of York Private Hire Association (YPHA) in relation to the operation of taxis in York. She expressed concern that taxi drivers were not asked to provide any form of identification when attending courses, meaning that there was no proof that the person attending the course and taking the exam was the person who would then drive the taxi, which put the public at risk. She asked for assurances that the new leader would continue to support the taxi trade and investigate this issue without delay.